Dave's Not Here Much Longer

Scott Hardie | April 5, 2014
Thoughts on David Letterman's exit, or who should replace him? What's your favorite Letterman bit from over the years?

Erik Bates | April 7, 2014
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Samir Mehta | April 7, 2014
I'm more of an admirer of Dave's than a "fan." I think it's a generational thing - I'm just slightly too young to know the wild and free Dave of the 1980s. Instead, I grew up when Conan was wild and free. It's an interesting thing about comedy (and perhaps art and entertainment generally) that so much of the great striking works that people do come early. Then they become popular and usually get a little tedious. And there are really so few exceptions, if any.

So what do I love about Dave since I missed when he was breaking through? His interviews. He's a better interviewer than every other late night host I've ever seen. And weirdly, I'd also put in his opening monologue when he came back on after September 11th. I still remember it almost word for word.

Chris Lemler | April 7, 2014
I like to watch Jay Leno when he was doing the show. But really didn't watch Dave Letterman at all cause I didn't think that he would be as good as Jay. But some people may feel different about who took over for Jay Leno. But I do want to wish Dave the best when he retires from the show.

Scott Hardie | April 12, 2014
Taste is subjective of course, but generally, comedians work better when they're outsiders looking in on society, able to take bigger risks and free of baggage. Once they become popular institutions, they can't help but lose their teeth, settling into a comfortable routine and having to protect the little nest they've made for themselves. This is why Dave and Conan were better early in their careers; even Jay Leno, one of the mildest comedian-hosts of recent years, was considered edgier and sharper in the 1980s. It's the same for shows: The early years of The Simpsons and Saturday Night Live are revered while the present-day output is ignored. When Sid Caesar passed away in February, one of his collaborators and admirers wrote that Caesar lost his edge when he gained his reputation, because he could never live up to his own popular legend, and because he could not evolve his comedy beyond what had worked for him in the past.

I appreciated Dave's anarchic bent even when it didn't yield laughs. He would make entire bits out of tossing objects off of rooftops just to watch them smash on the pavement, or tossing them into water just to see if they would float, as if anticipating the granular era of Internet comedy, when the littlest germ of an idea is considered acceptable entertainment. That kind of bit was partly a shrewd move to kill airtime (he had a lot of minutes to fill and comedy writing is hard), but it was also a way to challenge the conventions of the form: Other hosts would have churned out another 8-minute segment with another banal celebrity interview about some boring new movie, but Dave would fill those minutes with idiotic lazy filler that was beneath him and his staff, as if defying the comedy gods by saying "I have a show watched by millions and I have a huge production budget, and I'm going to spend my time putting tubes of toothpaste in a blender just to see what happens." And he would cackle at these bits with a certain mad glee, even when they weren't funny. His laugh was simultaneously defiant and comforting, reassuring us that he knew what he was doing in breaking the rules: Even if the bit itself wasn't funny, the fact that he was doing this on a major television network in front of millions, that was hilarious.

So even though I rarely watch Dave's show, I think the culture loses something by his retirement, inevitable though it is. I can see why CBS leapt at the opportunity to hire Stephen Colbert when he approached them: Colbert has the youthful references and Internet savviness of their competitors Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel, but he's also a master interviewer, one of Dave's remaining strengths. He's also "CBS young" at a sprightly 49; a much younger comedian-host of Fallon's age might have been rejected by CBS's older-skewing audience.

The next question is, what will happen to Colbert's old time slot? I'm hopeful for another Daily Show spinoff (spouses Samantha Bee and Jason Jones could make an awesome show together), but I have a hunch that Comedy Central will go in a different direction.

Scott Hardie | April 4, 2015
Just a thought: With Dave Letterman and Jon Stewart retiring this year, the late-night host with the longest-running program still on the air will be that old venerated veteran of the business... Jimmy Kimmel.

Conan O'Brien is of course the actual old guard in the late night business now, but his TBS show is still relatively new.

Erik Bates | April 4, 2015
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Scott Hardie | April 5, 2015
Agreed. Team Coco's YouTube channel is consistently pretty funny; Conan the show, not so much. I think once these shows started seeing the potential of YouTube and social media, they started engineering certain comedy bits specifically to go viral online, especially Jimmies Kimmel and Fallon. Whether that results in any larger viewership or significant revenue is anybody's guess.